Slashdot Mirror
The End of Email Cometh?
RebRachman asks: "Has the inevitable finally happened? After years of dismissing as alarmist all the commentary about how spam and security concerns will eventually render email useless, is it actually happening to us? I don't know about you, but for the past three days, all of our staff (we are a virtual company of 20 telecommuters) and clients have been unable to get email to one another reliably. Attachments disappear or become garbled, mail disappears into the great beyond, or arrives hours after it has been sent, even within the same ISP. We've resorted to sending one another an IM every time we send an email to confirm that the messages are arriving alright. In extreme cases we have even reverted to using a telephone handset to ensure that clients have received everything that was sent. Is it only a matter of time before we all resort to file transfer by P2P? (And if so, what are we going to do with these firewall boxes?)"
I hadn't noticed. Who are you paying money to lose your mail for you? They don't deserve it, because there are better services available without such problems. I know there must be, because I've never experienced them.
About the only problem I've ever had with email -- that wasn't my fault, anyway -- is overzealous spam filters. The simple solution to this is to install your own filters, set the threshhold relatively high, and check your junk mail folders periodically. Never should you blackhole email if you value its timely delivery. Anyway, the latest spam filters are good enough that this isn't much of a problem anymore.
Quit using your ISP's antispam features, if you cannot turn them off yourself, demand that your ISP turn them off for you.
Then install POPFile and take ownership of your own email.
Have your customers/others do the same.
It's the job of ICANN & IANA to get a grip on the SPAM issue,
they are issuing numbers and access to authorities that do not deserve it,
and have not fulfilled thier roles as governing bodies.
If you're using sendmail you should give milter-sender a look.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The US Military doesn't use computers that are hooked up to the Internet (or receive external email) for secure systems. The only spam would come from other cleared people on other cleared computers and that would be pretty traceable. Now I realize that they also have external mail systems, but I doubt that spammers are dumb enough to send a lot of email to .mil addresses, and I don't think that while it only effects external systems it will get the attention it needs.
This is a technical site, right? Has been for a while? Presumabley staffed with people who are technical to moderate stories and the like? How the heck would anyone with a modicum of knowlege post an article like this? Even if this wasn't a unique situation, we can fix email. It's not that big of a deal. All you need to do is modify DNS so that is the single MX record is replaced w/ a "MS" (Mail sender) and a "MR" (Mail Receiver) record. Mail is ONLY accepted by a MR if it comes from an address listed as an "MS" for the sending domain. Done. It's just a hassle. We'd have a period of two years where there is a transition, and it just hasn't gotten that bad yet.
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
While the Gmail service is itself reliable, it does not solve his problem. What if he tries to correspond with Hotmail users? Odds are it will go in the bit bucket. What if somebody tries to send him an EXE (or a ZIP file containing an EXE)? It will bounce (Google reasons correctly that most EXEs are viruses, so it rejects all messages containing them).
As much as I love Gmail, it is not adequate for a be-all, end-all email service.
...that you get a compentent network administrator.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism